Longbox Graveyard

It’s too hot for blogging and I’ve run through my inventory of Marvel 1977 posts … so Longbox Graveyard is going on hiatus.

I expect Longbox Graveyard to return in the Fall.

In the meantime, enjoy the beach!

Ms. Marvel #1

Ms. Marvel swoops onto the scene, sporting scarf and bare midriff, tossing around cars to foil a bank robbery and relying on her “Seventh Sense” to get out of — and into — trouble. There is a feeling of “just add water” with this first issue, with Ms. Marvel borrowing the costume of Captain Marvel, and the book borrowing the supporting cast of Spider-Man — Carol Danvers gets a job…

Black Panther #1

Jack Kirby hits the ground running in what was billed as the Black Panther’s first solo series, and all these years later it is still a singular accomplishment. Kirby’s Bronze Age work often seemed to stand alone — series like New Gods, Eternals, Captain America, and this Black Panther series feel siloed from the larger comics universes in which the reside, with limited points of…

Iron Man #94

Tony Stark does his best James Bond impression, trading barbs with an industrial super villain in his secret undersea base. Problem is, instead of a suave bad guy like Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Tony is matching wits with The Kraken, a peg-legged, modern-day pirate who never-the-less talks like something out of Robert Louis Stevenson.

I like pirates as much as the next guy, but by the…

Champions #10

A pack of Soviet villains, plus a very-goofy-looking bad guy called The Griffin, have captured the Black Widow and buried the rest of the Champions in a windowless vault deep inside the San Andreas fault. The bad guys sneer that trying to break out of the vault will trigger an earthquake that will destroy Los Angeles, which doesn’t seem to bother Hercules at all, who promptly goes…

Eternals #7

Kirby is in full, glorious, cosmic mode as his cast of men, gods, and madmen ramble around an ancient Incan ruin where colossal space sentinels have come to life. We witness the purposes of the Four Hosts of Celestials — the First who explore and experiment, the Second who kick ass, the Third who inspect and cultivate, and now the Fourth … who judge.

And based on behavior the three…

Ant-Man And The Wasp

Ant-Man And The Wasp buzz into theaters this week!

To celebrate the return of what might be Marvel’s most unlikely cinematic smash series, I’ve updated my article on Ant-Man’s origins as “The Man In The Ant Hill!”

Click HERE to read all about Ant-Man’s first appearance (and the origin of that groovy Jack Kirby ant helmet!)

Enjoy the movie!

Happy Fourth of July From Longbox Graveyard!

Happy Fourth of July from Longbox Graveyard (and Jack Kirby!).

(Just mentally correct that “200th Birthday” bit to “242nd,” ok?)

Raise your hand if you’ve waited since 1962 for the return of the Stone Men of Saturn! Anyone? No? Me neither. But you’re getting them, whether you want them or not, as Thor and his pals make an unscheduled landing on a lonely asteroid, only to be ambushed by those self-same anonymous bad guys who hadn’t been seen since Thor’s original journey into mystery.

A bit of hammer work and the hapless…

Omega The Unknown #6

Omega The Unknown #6

It’s great to just drop into the middle of this story. It would have been a what the hell? experience to pluck this off the rack in 1977, and the digital experience in 2018 isn’t much different. What we have here is a Steve Gerber stew. (In collaboration with Mary Skreenes!) There’s a mysterious super-dude in a red-and-blue suit who is completely out of place in this…

Eternals Annual #1

The (ahem) eternal war between Man and Deviant continues! Zakka The Tool-Master is unleashing horrors out of time on the streets of 1977, so the all-wise Zuras dispatches Karkas, Thena, and The Reject to put things right. Of course, given that Thena relies on a man-monster and a monstrous man to complete her mission, hilarity ensues. Reject rumbles with Jack the Ripper, while…

Howard The Duck #8

Howard the Duck #1

Howard’s Presidential campaign is in full-swing, and dealing with it has become a full-time job, with Howard and Bev dodging campaign fixers and an army of assassins determined to silence them.

These books were so wonderfully serviced by first-rate art. I think it was Stan Lee who said that Gene Colon could get tension out of drawing a guy turning a doorknob … and I’m not sure…